Agree or disagree with the following statement.

The problem is that the current regime of test and measurements is not based on human hearing/perceptual rules except in some very basic, almost vestigial ways (such as frequency response).

As a result sometimes the specs are counterintuitive; for example ultra low distortion should come off as neutral and good, but often in reality sounds dry and slightly on the bright side.

The idea behind the specs is to know you are buying quality- it should be borne out on the bit of paper. But until that bit of paper is designed to agree with how human perceptual rules work (and mind you, this has nothing to do with taste or preference) the paper can often wind up nearly meaningless.

So as others have wisely pointed out, you simply have to audition it to know if you will be able to live with it. The fact that this has been true for the last 50 years should really speak to how poorly bench specs sit with human hearing rules.

Also, remember that when the Tice clock came out, AC conditioning was unheard of.

Neither here or there on the clock, but this particular statement is absolutely false. The clock came out about 1993 or so; my first dealership was using power line conditioning in about 1987; that was an older unit made by Superior Electric in the 1950s- it was chock full of oil-filled caps and vacuum tubes and used something called a Saturable Reactor as part of its operating principle). Power line conditioners have been around long enough for them to actually be older than many of the people on this thread. We are refurbishing some Elgar line conditioners in our shop right now that were made in the 1970s (and are still some of the best ever made).